


crystal clear on a starlit night

by karasunonolibero



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Childhood Friends to Lovers, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:14:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24935884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karasunonolibero/pseuds/karasunonolibero
Summary: Keiji's summers and school breaks have always been spent at his family's cabin. Things change when his parents start letting his friend Chikara come along.
Relationships: Akaashi Keiji/Ennoshita Chikara
Comments: 17
Kudos: 20





	1. you took my hand and i followed you

**Author's Note:**

> ennoaka weekend is here!!! thank u enno for hosting!  
> so i took the three days and am doing a fic in three short connected snapshots. i had a lot of fun with this so i hope you enjoy it~!
> 
> (work title and chapter titles from [black and white by niall horan](https://youtu.be/gnvi8DrLJXI), please listen to it it's a lovely song)

Keiji wakes up to Chikara shaking his shoulder.

“We’re here, we’re here, get up!” Chikara exclaims, bouncing up and down in the backseat.

Keiji blinks twice, sitting up and yawning. “Already?”

“Already!” Chikara flings the car door open, grabs his little backpack, and runs out.

“Chikara, slow down!” But Keiji grabs his bag too, running toward the door, slipping past Chikara and beating him to the front porch by a second.

“No fair!” Chikara flops down on the porch and pouts.

“It’s because I’m older,” Keiji tells him.

“Only by a few weeks!”

“Boys,” Keiji’s mother interrupts softly. “Can you scoot out of the way so we can open the door?”

The results of the race apparently forgiven, Chikara throws his arms around Keiji as they inch away from the door. Keiji’s dad unlocks the cabin, and they trail inside after him.

Keiji’s has been spending school breaks and golden weeks at this cabin for as long as he can remember. It’s a long drive from Tokyo, but that’s okay—he gets to sleep in the car, so when he wakes up, it’s like he’s magically arrived. It was a little lonely, before; there were never many kids his age around the campsite, so he would have to entertain himself poking around with the bugs and naming the trees and looking at the stars at night by the fire.

But now Keiji is friends with Chikara, so Chikara gets to come to the cabin with him and his parents, and it’s not as lonely anymore. Now he can run around and play tag and splash somebody and talk about the constellations to someone who actually wants to listen.

Chikara runs ahead into their room; Keiji yells and dashes after him. His socks slip on the wooden floor and he almost slides right into the bunk bed post, but Chikara yanks on his hand, pulling him into the bottom bunk with a laugh.

“Wait! Come up here,” Keiji says, pointing to the top bunk. “I wanna make sure our stars are there.”

Three summers ago, Chikara brought a pack of glow-in-the-dark stars and told Keiji they could stick them on the ceiling and pretend they’re stargazing after their bedtime. Keiji climbs up the short ladder to the top bunk, careful not to bump his head on the low ceiling, and flops onto his back. Sure enough, the sticky stars are still there, arranged in a combination of real and made-up constellations. Chikara climbs up behind him, too excited, and hits his head on the ceiling.

“Ow!” Chikara sniffs, tearing up, and Keiji’s heart hurts.

“Chikara!” Keiji crawls over and hugs him. “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Chikara mumbles, carefully lying down in Keiji’s arms.

Keiji has started noticing the bed gets smaller every year. They’re growing fast, as ten-year-old boys do, and the narrow mattress doesn’t grow with them. He wonders if soon they’ll be too big to both fit in here. “It’ll be okay,” he tells Chikara. “Let’s look at the stars instead. See, they’re still up.”

“Yeah,” Chikara agrees. “Think they’ll stay there forever?”

“Forever. We’ll come back every summer and they’ll be there,” Keiji promises. They snuggle up with each other, and Keiji thinks this is really nice.

He doesn’t know it then, but they won’t come back here for another thirteen years.


	2. i always knew

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> day 2 — proposal!

“Thirteen years,” Chikara mumbles as Keiji turns right, driving off the main road down a narrow dirt path. “I can’t believe it’s been thirteen years.”

“You got busy,” Keiji says. “We both did.”

It couldn’t be helped. The two of them started playing volleyball the next year, meaning their summers were no longer free to be spent playing in the woods and crawling up to the top bunk to look at the stars. No, breaks became filled with training camps and extra practices, and then in high school, their teams played each other frequently, in tournaments and at training camps. Keiji only teased Chikara a little bit about all the times Fukurodani beat Karasuno.

It was at the training camps that something changed. Keiji knew he was guilty of staring a bit when Chikara was on the other side of the net, as Konoha so helpfully liked to tease him about. Keiji always brushed it off—besides, he saw Karasuno’s Sawamura and Sugawara looking at each other a lot. It was just something close friends did, a way of communicating without words.

Things changed at the training camps, but Keiji didn’t realize what those changes meant until university. They ended up in the same university in Tokyo, which pleased Keiji to no end. After years and years of growing up hours away from each other, now they could finally hang out all the time like best friends did. And they did—they shared a small apartment a few stops away from campus, studied together, kept playing volleyball together on a casual team. Somewhere in between the late study nights and the afternoons spent in coffee shops commiserating about homework, the lingering stares turned into kisses, which turned into much more as they went through university and into their careers.

All this to say, Keiji has planned this return to the cabin very carefully. They’re celebrating three years together, and Keiji wants to make this special.

When they get out, they take their time, unloading the bags and walking up to the door at a normal pace—they’re not the hyper little ten-year-olds they were last time.

But Chikara, ever the same, immediately drops his bags in the doorway and goes running toward their room. “Keiji! Let’s see if the stars are still up!”

“My parents must have taken them down by now.” But still, Keiji closes the front door and leaves his bags to follow Chikara. He wonders if the bunk bed is even still there, if his parents haven’t converted their old room into something else by now.

But when he steps inside, it’s like no time has passed at all. The room is frozen in time, with the sheets still on the beds and even a flashlight gathering dust on the nightstand. It’s kind of musty-smelling and the sheets need to be changed and the whole place freshened up, but—later.

“Look.” Chikara’s peers over the top bunk. “I think most of them are still here.”

“Really?” Keiji is careful as he climbs up the ladder, ducking under the ceiling and collapsing onto the mattress. There was barely enough room for both of them last time they were here and now, they’re nearly on top of each other just to fit. Keiji doesn’t mind, because it means he can kiss Chikara easily, so he does.

Chikara giggles and leans his forehead against Keiji’s. “I’m glad you took me back here.”

“Me, too. Hey, hold on.” Keiji squirms around a bit, digging his hand into the pocket of his jacket. The ring has been burning a hole in his pocket since he bought it several months ago, and now it’s finally time. He pulls out the small box and pops it open, holding it in the few inches of space between their faces.

Chikara blinks a few times, mouth dropping open as he sees the ring inside the box. “Keiji…”

“Chikara, I love you. I’ve been loving you before I knew what love was. I’ve been so lucky to have known you for all this time and even luckier to be with you these last three years. You’re it for me. I’ve known that for a long time. Will you marry me?”

Tears shimmer in Chikara’s eyes as he nods, taking Keiji’s face in his hands and kissing him. “Yes, of course I will,” he whispers once he pulls back.

Keiji smiles, holding his hand and placing the ring on his finger. “I love you.”

“I love you too.” Chikara grips his hand, then raises it up to his face, admiring the ring. “Can I ask you something?”

“Anything.”

“When did you know?”

Keiji kisses him again. “I always knew.”


End file.
